The truth about Popeye
While I was house-sitting a couple weeks ago, I watched a lot of TV.
One of the things I watched was some old Popeye cartoons. You all know how it goes: Popeye eats the spinach and instantly miraculously gets strong. His muscles drastically balloon out, and he is able to lift anything or overpower any opponent.
Who knows how many kids actually believed this crap and reluctantly agreed to eat their spinach, only to be bitterly disappointed.
Studies since then have shown that spinach, although still nutritious, does NOT necessarily do a lot for building muscles.
Part of the problem is due to a mistake that happened back in 1870. Dr. E. Von Wolf accidentally got a decimal point in the wrong place, which miscalculated the iron content of spinach to be ten times its actual value. The mistake wasn't discovered until 1937. And even then, the truth wasn't widely publicized until 1981.
Oh, and even though it's still nutritious, guess what: we can't absorb most of the iron anyway. OR the calcium.
"Although much lauded as a nutritional vegetable, spinach has a drawback in that, while containing high levels of iron and calcium, the rate of absorption is almost nil. The oxalic acid binds calcium into an insoluble salt (calcium oxalate), which cannot be absorbed by the body. The same applies to the iron, as it is bound, leaving only 2-5% of the seemingly plentiful supply actually available for absorption."
(Quoted from Innvista)
Poor kids.
Cruelly deceived into consuming shreds of green gunk they would ordinarily have left alone.
I like raw spinach salads. I like spinach quiche and alfredo veggie lasagna with spinach. But as for a big steaming plate of nothing but spinach, ugh. No thank you.
I'll get my iron elsewhere, thank you very much.
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